Sotheby's fails to sell 37-carat diamond amid auction jitters

A Christie's employee displays &quot;Le Grand Mazarin,&quot; a legendary 19.07-carat pink diamond during a preview at Christie's, in Geneva, Switzerland, Wednesday, Nov, 8, 2017. A 19-carat pink diamond that once belonged to King Louis XIV, Napoleon Bonaparte and other French rulers is going up for auction and is estimated to sell for 6 -9 million US dollars. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP)

INTERNATIONAL -
The largest known fancy intense pink diamond went unsold at Sotheby’s in Geneva on Wednesday amid jitters in the market for precious stones.

The Raj Pink, a 37-carat stone set in a ring, was discovered in 2015 in South Africa. Sotheby’s had estimated its value as high as $30 million. Other lots unsold in the auction included a vivid blue diamond ring estimated at as much as $18 million and two yellow diamonds worth as much as $14 million.

Christie’s sold a flawless 163-carat clear diamond for $34 million in the Swiss city Tuesday night, a price that some observers called low. Christie’s sold 27 lots for more than $1 million in that auction, though a quarter of the items it offered went unsold.

The auction market is sometimes seen as a bellwether for investors’ exuberance. Stock markets declined worldwide Wednesday, and both European stocks and Japan’s Topix index are in their longest losing streaks in a year.

Hedge-fund manager David Einhorn said Wednesday that the problems that caused the global financial crisis a decade ago still haven’t been resolved.